Big Blue Sky

I grew up in Cocoa, about fifty miles from where I now live in the Orlando area. It’s close enough to go to the beach or to visit friends, but too far to go all the time. Each time we visit, I notice that the sky is bluer, the air is clearer, and the living is easier than in Orlando. It’s an observation my wife, Vickie, has heard many times.

Last week our family went to the Keys with a group of my high school friends and their families. The first leg of the trip was to Cocoa from Orlando; then south on I-95 to Florida’s Turnpike. As we drove south past Ft Lauderdale, then Miami, I began my usual conversation with Vickie. This time, in addition to my usual observations, I told Vickie that the sky somehow even looked bigger.

After years of listening and smiling kindly, Vickie looked at me and said, “Do you think it might have something to do with the fact that you’re leaving work, responsibilities, and obligations behind?” Honestly, that had never occurred to me, but obviously she’s right.

Orlando’s a great place to live. I’ve got lots of good friends and a job I love. But to be relieved of responsibilities just gives you a different perspective. That’s what God wants for us.

If your relationship with God is full of obligation and measured by what you do or how you perform, you might want to reevaluate. If going to God feels like going to work, please rethink God.

But if going to God feels like going home to freedom, if it feels like going to the Keys with old friends under a bigger, bluer sky, then you’re getting a taste of the relationship God wants to have with you.

John Monday

Fathers Day

Today is Father’s Day, and my son will be giving me a gift. I know this because he’s barely been able to contain himself all week. On at least two occasions he’d have presented his gift early if he’d been allowed. He’ll get excited, grin ear to ear, and start bouncing like he’s standing barefoot on hot pavement.

I really don’t know what he has in store, but I already know it’s perfect. It could be a hand-made card, maybe a hammer from the dollar store; a box of screws is possible.

Whatever the gift might be, its perfection won’t lie in the gift, but in the heart of the giver. I know that my son wants to please me, but more poignantly, I know he wants me.
In the story of The Prodigal, two sons both wanted the father’s things, but neither wanted the father. The younger son obtained the father’s things, squandered the father’s things, and returned home broke and broken to seek employment as a hired hand.

After being unexpectedly welcomed by the father, receiving the finest robe and being fully restored, the son realized that his joy, his fulfillment, was not found in the father’s things, but in relationship with the father…Relationship…Desire to be with the father.

My son has not yet wrestled through all the materialistic temptations this world offers, nor does he fully understand the difference between desire for the father and the father’s things. However, this Father’s Day his true desire is evident, at least to me. His gift is perfect; I wonder what it is….

Happy Father’s Day.

Pulling Away the Veneer

One morning as I walked into work I saw Chris standing in the lobby. Chris is often in the lobby as I walk in, but this time he wasn’t alone. As he approached he introduced me to Neal and it became clear that this was going to take more of my time than I was willing to spend.

Despite my frustration I took a few minutes to listen to Neal. As it turns out Neal had been released from the hospital ED the day before where he had been treated for an infection in his leg, a sight I had no desire to see but was shown anyway. A few days before that he had been released from the Orange County jail where he spent 39 days for a minor offence. Prior to going to jail Neal spent a couple weeks at the Orlando Union Rescue Mission. All of his clothes were left at the mission when he was arrested, and had since been given away. He was at the Rescue Mission because his employer went out of business and was unable to pay his employees. But that is far from the beginning of Neal’s story.

Neal was a high school football star in Alabama. As a senior he was a team leader, an object of the local paper’s sports writer, and heavily recruited by colleges across the South. He had an offer of a full scholarship at the University of Alabama and was poised to live out his dream when he suffered a broken neck during a game. While the injury didn’t leave him incapacitated for life, it did leave him in the hospital for several months and unable to play football. When he got out of the hospital, his senior year had passed him by, there was no high school diploma, there were no scholarship offers, and he had developed a drug dependency. His drug dependency would dominate the next ten years of his life sending him into a spiral that led to alcohol, cocaine, crack, and eventually to Orlando.

To be fair he didn’t come straight to Orlando from his drug dependency. He had been clean for the better part of a year in Alabama. As sobriety replaced drug dependency Neal began to realize what he had lost and just how little he had. He had no money, no skills, no education, no prospects and he had burned the bridge of every relationship in his life. So after a stint in rehab he came to Orlando. His goal was to prove his sincerity and his ability to pull himself up, then return to Alabama with a bit of dignity and begin rebuilding relationships - a goal that clearly had not come to fruition.

As he was speaking to me his goals had been reduced to just one, He wanted to go home. He had been in touch with a pastor from his youth who had put him in touch with a local junk yard manager that was willing to give him a part time, minimum wage job back home. His only possession was a Home Depot store credit card worth $74.00, a possession he would happily sell. He had tried for days to sell the card but was unable to get anyone to talk to him in the Home Depot parking lot. It was in fact this effort to sell his store credit card that landed him in jail. You see, people don’t like to be approached in the Home Depot parking lot by big, homeless men, and Home Depot doesn’t like it either.

I’ll admit that I was moved by Neal. After I went with him to the Orlando Union Rescue Mission, where I verified that he had in fact been a exemplary tenant and his possessions had been given away days before; and I talked to the pastor in Alabama that helped him find a job; and I verified that the Home Depot store credit card was worth $74.37, then I agreed to buy him a bus ticket to Dothan Alabama for $79.00. He of course gave me the Home Depot card resulting in a net loss of $4.63.

So what? So what is the point of this rambling? What was my take away from the time I spent with Neal?

As I considered Neal the single thought that kept coming to my mind was that for days he couldn’t sell that card in the Home Depot parking lot. But the problem is not only the people in the Home Depot parking lot, it’s me too. Why was I so reticent to spend any of my precious time with Neal? Why do I avoid spending time that way with people like him? My time isn’t actually that valuable. Allow me to propose a possible answer.

When I considered Neal long enough I was struck less by our differences than by our similarities. I began to wonder, what would have to happen in my life to place me in his position? The answer is surprisingly little. But for one missed tackle in one game 12 years ago and Neal might be every kids Hero. How many of my opportunities would have to be taken away before I fail? How much of my ability? What if I had less diligent parents who were less committed to equipping me for life? What if I had a sudden accident resulting in a loss of mental or physical acuity? What if my employer, my friends, and my family lost all confidence in me?

What if there is a something more sinister? What if I capitulated to my base impulses? What if the social boundaries that guide my behavior were no longer able to contain me? What if the Relationships that compel me to behave no longer held sway in my life? How much of my life is a veneer that if ripped away would reveal a man very much in need, a man very much like Neal.

You see Neal is just like us without the veneer. Neal, and those like him, are walking reminders that we’re not OK. We have little tolerance for Neal because to look at him is to see ourselves. So much of our lives are houses of cards that crumble under the slightest weight. To engage with Neal fully is to be confronted with the depravity that lurks beneath the surface of our lives.

The reality of our condition is so offensive that many of us refuse to acknowledge it. Whether we consciously avoid it or subconsciously ignore it, it is there, waiting to overwhelm us. But this is precisely where authentic Christianity begins. Not in serving people like Neal, but in realizing that we are just like Neal. This is the point where Christ meets us and the only point at which Christ can change us… can save us.

Neal knows, and is absolutely clear, that he can not accomplish anything. He has no self-inflated ego; in fact he has no ego at all. This is the first work of God in the life of a Christian. We must have the veneer ripped away and see ourselves for who and what we are; utterly and totally degenerate creatures capable of no good thing. Upon realizing our depravity we must acknowledge it and surrender it to Christ. If we view it as something that we work on by ourselves or even together with Christ then we have inflated ourselves, denigrated Christ, and rejected his work of redemption in our souls. Our salvation is wholly and completely a work of Christ. The new creation that we become is wholly and completely a work of Christ, and to turn myself wholly over to another, even if the other is God, cuts against every thing in my nature, my sinful nature, the nature just under the veneer.

Maybe that’s the reason Neal couldn’t sell that store card.

Battlefield Friend

Saturday night my family and a bunch of friends will be going to the Monster Truck Jam at the Citrus Bowl. It’s become a much anticipated annual event. The first year my son, Luke, and I went alone. The second year Luke and I took four friends. Now it’s become four or five adults with fifteen, six-to ten-year-olds. We’ll go early, cook hot dogs, toss a football, go through the pits, and maybe get a ride in a monster truck.

I’ll admit the Monster Jam is not the opera; it tends to bring out a different side of its fans. In fact, each of the last two years fights broke out within a few feet of our seats. They were both minor incidents that were no doubt exacerbated by to much beer and Grave Digger fans sitting to close to Maximum Destruction fans. I viewed the fights as a minor annoyance, but for a dozen nine year old boys it was very memorable.

Last week Luke spent a big part of two days working on a special project in preparation for the Jam. I wasn’t aware of the project until I saw him and my six-year-old daughter, Taylor, playing with what I thought was a stick. Taylor would put the stick in her back pocket, act nonchalant, then quickly pull it out and take a defensive position like she was a gang member in a knife fight. While she was practicing her stance Luke was advising her about how to hold the stick and what to do with it. Upon interrogation of the kids, I found that the stick had been specially chosen by Luke, cut to a specific size that would easily fit in Taylor’s pocket, and sharpened to a very intimidating point. You see, if a fight were to break out, Luke didn’t want Taylor to be defenseless.

After a teaching moment, I wasn’t sure whether to be scared, entertained, proud or angry. I leaned toward proud and entertained. But it made me reflect on the words of a friend, Danny Howell. He told me we’re all born in a war zone. He told me that the fight predated our arrival here on planet Earth and is bound to affect every one of us. He also told me that in war there is collateral damage; in other words, bad things happen. The Haitians know it, widows and widowers know it, parents sitting in NICU lobbies know it, my kids even know it. We try to prepare for it, we try to avoid it, and we try to convince ourselves that we’re exempt from it, but bad things happen.

I think Danny’s right - we’re all battlefield babies. The thing that I think is really cool is that Taylor found a defender on the battlefield. Luke cared for Taylor enough to make sure she was protected. His hand-carved weapons and diligent training won’t be enough to protect Taylor from all the evils of the war, but I wonder if there is a model here. Every one of us either has been or will be hurt in this great conflict. When the pain becomes personal, or we witness hideous wrongs committed against the innocents in our world, or the earth itself seems to harbor malevolence like it did in Haiti, no explanation will be sufficient to answer the question: why?

But wouldn’t it be great to know that there is someone out there searching for us on the battlefield, in the rubble. Someone who will help us, prepare us, arm us, throw himself on a grenade for us. Someone who will never leave us, someone who will save us from this inescapable war… There is... That's the Gospel and his name is Christ.